The oldest known Latin geography, “De Chorographia,” was written about 43 A.D. by an otherwise unknown Pomponius Mela, of Tingentera, in Spain. With the strange mental poverty of Roman literature, Mela bases his work chiefly on older Greek sources (e.g., Herodotus and Eratosthenes) which are several centuries before his time; but in addition he gives much information not found elsewhere. Whether this is also for the most part taken from older writers it is impossible to say, as he nowhere gives his authorities. His descriptions, especially those of more distant regions, are sometimes made obscure and contradictory by his evidently having drawn upon different sources without combining them into a whole.
The world according to Mela
He begins with these words of wisdom: “All this, whatever it is, to which we give the name of universe and heaven, is one and includes itself and everything in a circle (‘ambitu’). In the middle of the universe floats the earth, which is surrounded on all sides by sea, and is divided by it from west to east [that is, by the equatorial sea, as in Crates of Mallus] into two parts, which are called hemispheres.” Whether one is to conclude from this that the earth in his opinion was a sphere or a round disc, he seems to leave the reader to determine. He divides the earth into the five zones of Parmenides. The two temperate or habitable zones seem, according to Mela, to coincide with the two masses of land, while the uninhabitable ones, the torrid and the two frigid zones, are continuous sea. On the southern continent dwell the Antichthons, who are unknown, on account of the heat of the intervening region. On the northern one we dwell, and this is what he proposes to describe.
Europe is bounded on the west by the Atlantic, and on the north by the British Ocean. Asia has on the north the Scythian Ocean.
[iii. c. 5.] In proof of the continuity of these oceans he appeals not only to the physicists and Homer, but also to Cornelius Nepos, “who is more modern and trustworthy,” and who confirms it and “cites Quintus Metellus Celer as witness thereto, and says that he has narrated the following: When he was governing Gaul as proconsul the king of the Boti[84] gave him some Indians,” who “by stress of storm had been carried away from Indian waters, and after having traversed all the space between, had finally reached the shores of Germania.”
Mela has many ancient fables to tell of the peoples in the northern districts of Germania, Sarmatia and Scythia, which last was his name for what is now Russia and for the north of Asia. It appears that he too was of the opinion that a cold climate develops savagery and cruelty.
He says of Germania [iii. c. 3]: “The inhabitants are immense in soul and body; and besides their natural savagery they exercise both, their souls in warfare, their bodies by accustoming them to constant hardship, especially cold.” “Might is right to such an extent that they are not even ashamed of robbery; only to their guests are they kind, and merciful towards suppliants.” The people of Sarmatia were nomads. [iii. c. 4.] “They are alike warlike, free, unconstrained, and so savage and cruel that the women go to war together with the men. In order that they may be fitted thereto the right breast is burned off immediately after birth, whereby the hand which is drawn out [in drawing a bow] becomes adapted for shooting [by the breast not coming in the way or because the arm grew stronger] and the breast becomes manly.[85] To draw the bow, to ride and to hunt are employments for the young girls; when grown up it is their duty to fight the foe, so that it is held to be a shame not to have killed some one, and the punishment is that they are not allowed to marry.”[86] It would appear that the northern countries, according to the view of Mela, had a tendency to “emancipate” women, even though he always regards it as a severe punishment for them to have to live as virgins.[86] Among the Xamati in his western Asia, at the mouth of the Tanais [i. c. 19], “the women engage in the same occupations as the men.” “The men fight on foot and with arrows, the women on horseback, not using swords, but catching men in snares and killing them by dragging them along.” Those who have not killed an enemy must live unmarried. Amongst other peoples the women do not confine themselves to this snaring of men; the Mæotides who dwell in the country of the Amazons are governed by women; and farthest north live the Amazons; but he does not tell us whether the latter could dispense with men altogether, and reproduce themselves like the women he tells us of on an island off the coast of Africa, who were hairy all over the body. “This is related by Hanno, and it seems worthy of credit, because he brought back the skin of some he had killed.” [iii. c. 9.]
But this increasing savagery towards the north had a limit, as in the early Greek idea, after which things became better again; for beyond the country of the Amazons [i. c. 19] and other wild races, like the Thyssagetæ and Turcæ who inhabited immense forests and lived by hunting,[87] there extended, apparently towards the north-east (?), a “great desert and rugged tract, full of mountains, as far as the Aremphæans, who had very just customs and were looked upon as holy.”[88] “Beyond them rise the Rhipæan Mountains and behind them lies the region that borders on the Ocean.” In addition, the happy “Hyperboreans” dwelt in the north. In his description of Scythia he says of them [iii. c. 5]: “Then [i.e., after Sarmatia] come the neighbouring parts of Asia [or the parts bordering on Asia ?]. Except where continual winter and unbearable cold reigns, the Scythian people dwell there, almost all known by the name of ‘Belcæ’ (?). On the shore of Asia come first the Hyperboreans, beyond the north wind and the Rhipæan Mountains under the very pivot of the stars” [i.e., the pole]. In their country the sun rose at the vernal equinox and set at the autumnal equinox, so that they had six months day and six months night. “This narrow [or holy ?] sunny land is in itself fertile.” He goes on to give a description of the happy life of the Hyperboreans, taken from Greek sources.
